


She Moves Through The Fair

by TheMuchTooMerryMaiden



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, First duet!, Friends to Lovers, Harmony - Freeform, M/M, Music, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden/pseuds/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's something he only does when he's been drinking; something tied up with bits of his childhood that he'd rather not even think about let alone deal with, but sometimes, just sometimes when he's half-cut John allows himself to sing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Moves Through The Fair

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt from [Valeria](http://valeria2067.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.

One of the few faults that Sherlock finds with John is that he isn't musical or at least he's not musical like Sherlock is. Sherlock knows that John used to play the clarinet but equally he knows or thinks he knows that if John was musical like him he wouldn’t be an ex-clarinettist, he would still play, it would burst out of him if he tried to resist. Of course what Sherlock doesn’t know is that the clarinet was only ever an inadequate substitute. When Sherlock finds out it happens this way.

It’s been a god-awful case, solved but solved too late, nothing they did wrong, it would never have been solved without them, but that’s no comfort to them when they find the body, when they watch Lestrade turn ashen at the thought of speaking to the parents. By unspoken agreement they turn in at the off-licence on the way back to Baker Street and while John would have gone for quantity over quality, Sherlock selects a ridiculously expensive bottle of single malt and as he hands over his debit card, it occurs to John that the single bottle costs more than his first grant cheque when he went to University and he lived for three months on that.

Back in the flat, John collects two tumblers while Sherlock cracks the seal on the bottle and the aroma begins to fill the living room. For John it’s part of the smell of home, or more particularly the smell of his father, quietly, almost unheard the songs begin to play in the back of his mind. 

When they are a quarter of the way through the bottle they are both of them feeling more cheerful. Sherlock marvels a little at how the brain and the psyche are so prone to being altered by such simple chemistry. John, who in his time has put much more time and effort into drinking (after all medical school and rugby club and the army) is not marvelling but that doesn’t mean that he likes it any the less. Sherlock is telling a long involved story about when he and Mycroft were young and John, well as far as John is concerned it’s not about the words, it’s about the voice, the timbre, the relaxation he can hear in his friend’s speech.

When they are half way through the bottle Sherlock has become much more quiet, and he’s staring at John as John tells a story about medical school. John has drunk too much to know this but Sherlock is staring at his mouth because he can’t get the picture of kissing those lips out of his mind, every time he tries to think about something else he loses his concentration and finds that he is again watching John’s lips move. 

The story John is telling doesn’t so much end as stop and for a moment Sherlock thinks that John has fallen asleep, although that doesn’t seem likely, he’s not such a light-weight. And then, still with his eyes shut, John begins to sing. It’s an Irish folk song, and has the complexities of pitch and rhythm that belong to a true folk song rather than ‘folk music’. Sherlock is transfixed. Part of his mind is cataloguing, a light baritone, or a tenor with an incredibly good low range, just a little bit rusty at the edges but considering that in the two years he has known John he’s never heard the man sing it boggles his mind as to how good he must be when he’s in practice. However the bigger part of his mind simply soars with the melody, caught by the beauty of John’s voice, the sheer emotion in every note. He’s heard the song before but he knows that he’s neither truly heard the song before nor has he really heard John.

When the song finishes there is silence until after a few moments John seems to come back to himself and looks round self-consciously with a mumbled apology on his lips. Sherlock cannot bear the idea that John might apologise for that transcendence and he kisses him, to taste the lips that could produce that sound, to stop the apology and because the very idea of not kissing them is wrong to him on some fundamental level. When Sherlock pulls away John smiles and begins to sing again, this time a hymn, one that Sherlock knows, one with a complex harmony but not so complex that Sherlock can’t join in, shuddering at the honour done to him that he should be invited to share this with John, shuddering because he knows now that even if they have to wait, they will in the end share everything.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song John is singing, it isn't the most complex thing he could have sung, but it is beautiful done right. The hymn I had in mind was one of the versions of 'The Lord's My Shepherd' that I used to sing in parts with my sister.


End file.
